No longer the robot on stage, Marco Rubio transformed into the Anti-Trump during the 10th Republican debate. The question remains on whether it will help him for Super Tuesday.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s campaign team promised they would not go after Donald Trump during Thursday night’s debate. The misdirection worked as the consistent second-place candidate forced the conversation away from Trump’s inevitability to his anger.
With five days before a run of primaries, mostly throughout the South, Rubio turned the debate into a two-hour dogfight, hurling his strongest attacks on the real estate mogul in an attempt to consolidate the campaign into a two-man race.
One of his first attacks involved a Florida resort where Trump has been hiring foreign workers over local residents.
“Even today, we saw a report in one of the newspapers that Donald, you’ve hired a significant number of people from other countries to take jobs that Americans could have filled,” he said. He further progressed stating that Trump had interviewed a number of Americans willing to take the jobs, “if you had been willing to hire them to do it.”
Before Trump could respond, Rubio interrupted from a different vantage point: hiring illegal workers to work on his projects. The senator said Trump was the “only person on this stage that has ever ben fined for hiring people to work on your projects illegally.”
Rubio then prompted the public to Google for the evidence that Trump hired illegal workers, something Trump tried to say was “totally wrong.” A quick search popped up a story from 2015 saying that Trump Tower was built by illegal Polish workers.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz followed that up with his own attack on Trump, saying the bombastic billionaire was not conservative enough on immigration.
“When I was leading the fight against the ‘Gang of Eight’ amnesty bill, where was Donald? He was firing Dennis Rodman on ‘Celebrity Apprentice,” Cruz said.
Rubio’s attacks turned to Trump University, what the Florida senator called a “fake university” that scammed people into borrowing tens of thousands of dollars; manufacturing his clothing line overseas; and belittling his business acumen for failing in the casino business.
When Trump tried to react, Rubio was ready to turn a mistake into an asset. When he blasted Trump for a weak plan to replace Obamacare, Rubio said the businessman was repeating a flawed argument.
“Talk about repeating. I watched him repeat himself five times four weeks ago,” Trump said, pointing to a disastrous performance in New Hampshire.
“I saw you repeat yourself five times five seconds ago,” Rubio quipped back.
The harshest words flew when Israel came up during the debate. Trump stated that his pro-Israel stance would not prohibit him from being a neutral arbiter in the peace process with Palestinians.
“The Palestinians are not a real-estate deal,” Rubio said.
“A deal is a deal,” Trump retorted.
“A deal is not a deal when you’re dealing with terrorists,” Rubio snapped back.
The hope for Rubio’s camp is that the brutal performance was not too late in the campaign. The next day, Trump’s anger flashed on Twitter with typos filled in his blasting of both Cruz and Rubio.
“Lying Ted Cruz and lightweight chocker (sic) Marco Rubio teamed up last night in a last ditch effort to stop our great movement. They failed!” Trump tweeted before correcting the spelling. This prompted Rubio’s opposition research director to fire back.
Must not have taught spelling at Trump University. Then again, con artist didn't teach anything there. https://t.co/6Xc2qrYlw9
— Joe Pounder (@PounderFile) February 26, 2016
Did you outsource your twitter account this morning to Romania as well? #MakeTrumpHireAmericans https://t.co/WB9H0jQQQu
— Joe Pounder (@PounderFile) February 26, 2016
The attacks did not stop there, however. During a stopover in Dallas, Rubio continued throwing punches, showing off his willingness to be the anti-Trump candidate. He took Trump to task about his inability to spell this morning, his hiring of illegal workers and of foreign workers before hiring Americans, and his company’s four bankruptcies.
Rubio earlier this hour in Dallas, on Trump: "This guy bankrupted a casino. How do you bankrupt a casino? How do you bankrupt a casino?"
— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) February 26, 2016
Justin Shimko
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